The conditions that a leader must have directly stem from the nature of the Islamic government. After general conditions, such as sanity, there are two foundational conditions which are:

Knowledge of the law.

Justice.

When differences arose after the Noble Prophet (s) as to who would take on the responsibility of the caliphate there was no difference of opinion in whether the future leader must have merits. The only difference was in regards to which person had those merits.

Since the Islamic government is a government of laws it is necessary for the leader to know what those laws are – as has been mentioned in traditions. It is not only necessary for the leader to have this knowledge but anyone who has some sort of position must have this knowledge as well. But, the leader must have the most knowledge. Our imams used this to reason for their imamate – they would say that an imam must be better than the rest of the people. The criticisms that Shia scholars give are also in this regard where they say that so and so asked the ruling from the caliph who was unable to answer him and therefore the caliph is not suitable for caliphate. They also say that the caliph performed such and such action that was in opposition to Islamic law and therefore he is not suitable for caliphate.

Knowing the law and being just are foundational pillars for Muslims. Nothing else has as much importance, for instance knowledge about the angels, knowledge about the attributes of Allah, none of these matter in the issue of imamate. If one has knowledge about all fields of science and has discovered all of the laws of nature or is an amazing musician he will not become more suitable for leading an Islamic government than one who has knowledge about the law and is just. That which is related to caliphate and that which was discussed in the age of the Prophet (s) and the imams (a) and that which is certain amongst the Muslims is that the leader or the caliph must know Islamic laws and must be just in theological and ethical matters. Intellect denotes this as well because and Islamic government is a government of law – not a free-flowing government or a government clinging to the whims of an individual. If the leader does not know the law he is not suitable for leadership because if he follows someone the strength of the government would be broken and if he does not follow someone he would not be able to implement the law. The tradition: “Jurists rule over sultans” is certain. If sultans followed Islam they would have to follow jurists – they would have to ask the jurists what the law would be in various cases and how to implement it. In this case the real leaders are the jurists and that is why they must officially take control of the government and not give it to someone who is forced to follow them because they are ignorant of the law.

Of course, it is not necessary for general workers to know all Islamic laws and become jurists. Rather, it is enough for them to know the laws that are in relation to their work; it is enough to know their duties.

This was the case in the time of the Prophet (s) and the Commander of the Faithful (a). The leader must have these two merits, but their representatives and other workers who are sent to other lands must know the laws that are in relation to their work.

A leader must be perfect in theological beliefs and ethics. He must be just. He must not be polluted by sin. A person who wants to implement divine punishments in their correct places; a person who wants to take control of the public treasury; a person who Allah gives power over his servants must not sin. “My pledge does not reach the oppressors.”

If a leader is not just he would not act just in giving Muslims their rights, obtaining taxes, spending the money obtained from taxes correctly, and implementing divine punishments. It is possible that he would place those close to him over the society and spend the public treasury to his own benefit. (Walayat al-Faqih, p.58-61)

The door of ijtehad must always be open in an Islamic government. The nature of a revolution and a government dictates that ijtehadi opinions must be freely given – even if they oppose one another. Nobody should have the right to prevent this. But, what is important is correctly understanding governance and the society in which, according to them, the Islamic system can make plans for the benefit of Muslims. It is here that the term ijtehad used in the Islamic seminary is not enough, rather if a person is the most knowledgeable in regards to the sciences taught in the Islamic seminary but is unable to recognize what is in the best interest of the society or is unable to recognize righteous people from non-righteous people he would not have a political vision and would not have the ability to make correct decisions. This person is not a mujtahid in social or government matters and cannot become the leader of the society. (Sahifah Nur, v.21, p.47, 1988, Tehran)

Dear Shaykh Ali Mishkini:

After greetings, you wanted my viewpoint in regards to the constitution. Whatever the people in charge thought was correct act in accordance to it. I will not intervene – except in the matter of leadership. We cannot leave our Islamic country without a leader. We must choose someone who will defend the honor of Islam in the political world.

At the beginning I believed and insisted that the condition of being a marja’ is not necessary. A just mujtahid who is confirmed by the Khobregan and is respected throughout the country is enough. If the people vote for the Khobregan so that they determine which just mujtahid is suitable for leadership then his acceptance is the acceptance of the people. In this case he will be chosen by the people and his governance will be established.

I said this in regards to the constitution, but our friends insisted on the condition of being a marja’ and because of that I accepted. I knew at that time that this will not be applicable in the near future. (Sahifah, v.21, p.129, 1989, Tehran)

At the same time that Islam orders man to worship and at the same time that Islam shows man how to worship, it tells man how to live and how his relationship with other humans must be. Islam even tells us how an Islamic society must deal with other societies. There is no action or movement from an individual or a society that does not have a ruling in Islam. Therefore, it is clear that the concept of an Islamic leadership and being religious encompasses all facets of the society because Islam takes the responsibility of guiding a society in all of its dimensions. (Sahifah Nur, v.4, p.167-168, 1978, Paris)

Islam is not something that only looks at one side of an issue. Islam has rulings on all sides of all issues – all of the issues relating to the world, relating to politics, relating to the society, relating to economics, and relating to everything which the people of the world do not know about. Monotheistic religions came to glance at both sides of the issue; to devise a plan which would be implemented by both sides. It is not the case that it only deals with one side while the other side is left ambiguous. Islam is especially this way – more than the other religions. [The two sides are referring to matters of this world and matters of the hereafter] (Sahifah, v.9, p.137, 1979, Langarud)

The Glorious Quran which is in the hands of the Muslims is the same as it was from the beginning of Islam to now; one letter has not been added to it or taken away from it. When this Quran invites people to ponder it does not mean that they should sit in their homes and remember Allah; to remember Him in private. The issue is a social issue, it is an invitation to politics; an invitation to governance and at the same time all of these issues are acts of worship. Worship was not separated from politics and social benefits. In Islam, everything which has been encouraged has a spiritual dimension, even working in factories, farming on farms, teaching in schools – all of these are in the benefit of Islam and have spiritual dimensions. (Sahifah, v.18, p.275, 1984, Tehran)

Islam’s ethical rulings are also political. The ruling that is in the Quran which states that Muslims are brothers to one another is an ethical ruling, a social ruling, and a political ruling. If the members of the various tribes that have become Muslim believe in Allah and the Prophet they are brothers. In the same way that brothers love each other, all groups must love each other. In addition to this being one of the huge Islamic ethical and in addition to it having huge ethical results it is also a huge social ruling that has huge social results. (Sahifah, v.13, p.23, 1980)

It can be said that, without exception, all of the divine encouragements, even in personal matters and even in issues regarding one’s relationship with Allah, have a social and political dimension to them. (Sahifah, v.18, p.274, 1984, Tehran)

If you were able to understand the meaning of religion in Islamic culture you would clearly see that there is no contradiction between religious leadership and political leadership. Rather, just as political struggles are part of one’s religious duties leading political movements is part of the responsibility of religious leaders. (Sahifah, v.4, p.167, Paris, 1978)

The slogan that religion and politics are separate is one of the propagational aspects of the occupational forces who want to keep Muslims away from deciding their own destiny. In Islamic law political and social issues are discussed before matters of worship. The Prophet’s methods in regards to internal and external political issues show that one of the great battles of the Prophet (s) was a political battle.

The martyrdom of the Commander of the Faithful (a) and Hussayn (a) as well as the imprisonment, torture, and poisoning of other imams (a) was all on the path of Shia political battles against oppressors. In one word: fighting and political activity make up an important part of religious responsibility. (Sahifah, v.4, p.33, 1977, Paris)

Israel has justified its assault on Gaza as entirely defensive, intended only to stop Hamas firing rockets on Israel’s southern communities. Although that line has been repeated unwaveringly by officials since Israel launched its attack on 27 December, it bears no basis to reality. Rather, this is a war against the Palestinians of Gaza, and less directly those in the West Bank, designed primarily to crush their political rights and their hopes of statehood.

The most glaring evidence contradicting the Israeli casus belli is the six-month ceasefire between Hamas and Israel that preceded the invasion. True, Hamas began firing its rockets as soon as the truce came to an end on 19 December, but Israel had offered plenty of provocation. Not least it broke the ceasefire by staging a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas members. Even more significantly, it maintained and tightened a blockade during the ceasefire period that was starving Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants of food, medicine and fuel. Hamas had expected the blockade lifted in return for an end to the rockets.

A few days before Israel’s attack on Gaza, Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel’s domestic security service, the Shin Bet, noted Hamas’ commitment to the ceasefire and its motives in restarting the rocket fire. “Make no mistake, Hamas is interested in maintaining the truce,” he told the cabinet. “It seeks to improve its conditions — a removal of the blockade, receiving a commitment from Israel that it won’t attack and extending the lull to the Judea and Samaria area [the West Bank].” In other words, had Israel wanted calm, it could have avoided invading Gaza simply by renegotiating the truce on more reasonable terms.

Israel, however, had little interest in avoiding a confrontation with Hamas, as events since the Islamic group’s takeover of Gaza in early 2006 show.

It is widely agreed among the Israeli leadership that Hamas represents a severe threat to Israel’s ambition to crush the Palestinians’ long-standing demands for a state in the West Bank and Gaza. Unike Fatah, its chief Palestinian political rival, Hamas has refused to collude with the Israeli occupation and has instead continued its resistance operations. Although Hamas officially wants the return of all the lands the Palestinians were dispossessed of in 1948, at the establishment of Israel, it has shown signs of increasing pragmatism since its election victory, as Diskin’s comments above highlight. Hamas leaders have repeatedly suggested that a long-term, possibly indefinite, truce with Israel is possible. Such a truce would amount to recognition of Israel and remove most of the obstacles to the partition of historic Palestine into two states: a Jewish state and a Palestinian one.

Rather than engaging with Hamas and cultivating its moderate wing, Israel has been preparing for an “all-out war,” as Ehud Barak, the defense minister, has referred to the current offensive. In fact, Barak began preparing the attack on Gaza at least six months ago, as he has admitted, and probably much earlier.

Barak and the military stayed their hand in Gaza chiefly while other strategies were tested. The most significant was an approach espoused in the immediate wake of Hamas’ victory in 2006. Dov Weisglass, former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s fixer in Washington, gave it clearest expression. Israel’s policy, he said, would be “like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won’t die.”

John Wolfensohn, envoy to the Quartet of the United States, the United Nations, Europe and Russia through most of 2005, has pointed out that the US and Israel reneged on understandings controlling the border crossings into Gaza from the moment of Israel’s disengagement in summer 2005. In an interview with the Israeli media, he attributed the rapid destruction of the Gazan economy to this policy. However, although the blockade began when Fatah was still in charge of the tiny enclave, the goal of Weisglass’ “diet” was to intensify the suffering of Gaza’s civilians. The rationale was that, by starving them, they could be both reduced to abject poverty and encouraged to rise up and overthrow Hamas.

But it seems the Israeli army was far from convinced a “diet” would produce the desired result and started devising a more aggressive strategy. It was voiced last year by Israel’s deputy defense minister, Matan Vilnai. He observed that, if Hamas continued firing rockets into Israel (in an attempt, though he failed to mention it, to break the blockade), the Palestinians “will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.” The Hebrew word “Shoah” has come to refer exclusively to the Holocaust.

Though his disturbing comment was quickly disowned, Vilnai is no maverick. He is a former major general in the army who maintains close ties to the senior command. He is also a friend of his boss, Ehud Barak, the Labor leader and Israel’s most decorated soldier. The reference to the “shoah” offered a brief insight into the reasoning behind a series of policies he and Barak began unveiling from summer 2007.

It was then that hopes of engineering an uprising against Hamas faded. The diet regime had patently failed, as had a Fatah coup attempt underwritten by the United States. Hamas struck a pre-emptive blow against Fatah, forcing its leaders to flee to the West Bank. In retaliation the Israeli government declared Gaza a “hostile entity.” Barak and Vilnai used Gaza’s new status as the pretext for expanding the blockade of food and medicines to include electricity, a policy that was progressively tightened. At the same time they argued that Israel should consider cutting off “all responsibility” for Gaza. The intention of Barak’s blockade, however, was different from the Weisglass version. It was designed to soften up Gazan society, including Hamas fighters, for Israel’s coming invasion.

Far from being threatened by the intensifying blockade, Hamas turned it to its advantage. Although Israel controls two of the land borders and patrols the coast, there is fourth short land border shared with Egypt, close by the town of Rafah. There Gaza’s entrepreneurs developed a network of smuggling tunnels that were soon commandeered by Hamas. The tunnels ensured both that basic supplies continued to get through, and that Hamas armed itself for the attack it expected from Israel.

From March 2008 Barak and Vilnai began pushing their military strategy harder. New political formulations agreed by the government suggested the whole population of Gaza were to be considered complicit in Hamas actions, and therefore liable for retaliatory military action. In the words of the daily Jerusalem Post newspaper, Israeli policy makers took the view that “it would be pointless for Israel to topple Hamas because the population [of Gaza] is Hamas.”

At this point, Barak and Vilnai announced they were working on a way to justify in law the army directing artillery fire and air strikes at civilian neighborhoods of Gaza, as has been occurring throughout the current Gaza campaign. Vilnai, meanwhile, proposed declaring areas of the tiny enclave “combat zones” in which the army would have free rein and from which civilians would be expected to flee — again a tactic that has been implemented over the past three weeks.

Although Israel is determined to crush Hamas politically and militarily, so far it has been loathe to topple it. Israel withdrew from Gaza precisely because the demographic, military and economic costs of directly policing its refugee camps were considered too high. It will not be easily dragged back in.

Other options are either unpalatable or unfeasible. A Fatah government riding in on the back of Israeli tanks would lack legitimacy, and no regime at all — anarchy — risks losing forces more implacably opposed to a Jewish state than Hamas, including al-Qaeda. Placing Gaza under a peacekeeping force faces other hurdles: not least, the question of which countries would be prepared to take on such a dangerous burden.

Instead Israel is planning to resort to its favorite diplomatic maneuver: unilateralism. It wants a solution that passes over the heads of Hamas and the Palestinians. Or as Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, put it: “There is no intention here of creating a diplomatic agreement with Hamas. We need diplomatic agreements against Hamas.” The formula currently being sought for a ceasefire will face opposition from Israel unless it helps achieve several goals.

Israel’s first is to seal off Gaza properly this time. Egypt, although profoundly uncomfortable at having an Islamic group ruling next door, is under too much domestic pressure to crack down on the tunneling. Israel therefore wants to bring in American and European experts to do the job. They will ensure that the blockade cannot be broken and that Hamas cannot rearm with the the help of outside actors like Iran. At best, Hamas can hope to limp on as nominal ruler of Gaza, on Israeli sufferance.

The second goal has been well articulated by the Harvard scholar Sara Roy, who has been arguing for some time that Israel is, in her words, “de-developing” Gaza. The blockade has been integral to achieving that objective, and is the reason Israel wants it strengthened. In the longer term, she believes, Gazans will come to be “seen merely as a humanitarian problem, beggars who have no political identity and therefore can have no political claims.”

In addition, Gazans living close to the enclave’s northern and southern borders may be progressively “herded” into central Gaza — as envisioned in Vilnai’s plan last year. That process may already be under way, with Israeli leafletting campaigns warning inhabitants of these areas to flee. Israel wants to empty both the Rafah area, so that it can monitor more easily any attempts at tunneling, and the northern part because this is the location of the rocket launches that are hitting major Israeli cities such as Ashkelon and Ashdod and may one day reach Tel Aviv.

The third and related goal, as Barak and Vilnai proposed more than a year ago, is to cut off all Israeli responsibility for Gaza — though not oversight of what is allowed in. Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian analyst, believes that in this scenario Israel will insist that humanitarian supplies into Gaza pass only through the Egyptian crossing, thereby also undercutting Hamas’ role. Already Israel is preparing to hand over responsibility for supplying Gaza’s electricity to Egypt — a special plant is under construction close by in the Sinai.

Slowly, the hope is, Gaza’s physical and political separation from the West Bank will be cemented, with the enclave effectively being seen as a province of Egypt. Its inhabitants will lose their connection to the wider Palestinian people and eventually Cairo may grow bold enough to crack down on Hamas as brutally as it does its own Islamists.

The regime of Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, meanwhile, will be further isolated and weakened, improving Israel’s chances of forcing it to sign a deal annexing East Jerusalem and large swaths of the West Bank on which the Jewish settlements sit.

The fourth goal relates to wider regional issues. The chief obstacle to the implementation of Israel’s plan is the growing power of Iran and its possible pursuit of nuclear weapons. Israel’s official concern — that Tehran wants to attack Israel — is simple mischief-making. Rather Israel is worried that, if Iran becomes a regional superpower, Israeli diktats in the Middle East and in Washington will not go unchallenged.

In particular, a strong Iran will be able to aid Hizballah and Hamas, and further fan the flames of popular Muslim sentiment in favor of a just settlement for the Palestinians. That could threaten Israel’s plans for the annexation of much of the West Bank, and possibly win the Palestinians statehood. None of this can be allowed to pass by Israel.

It is therefore seeking to isolate Tehran, severing all ties between it and Hamas, just as it earlier tried — and failed — to do the same between Iran and Hizballah. It wants the Palestinians beholden instead to the “moderate” block in the Arab world, meaning the Sunni dictatorships like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia that in turn depend on Washington for their security.

The prospects of Israel achieving all or even some of these goals seems improbable. Too often Israeli meddling in its neighbors’ affairs has ended in unintended consequences, or “blowback.” It is a lesson Israel has been all too slow to learn.

Islam and revolutions that have sprung forth from Islam in all ages have been in danger of enemies and an attack by arrogant powers. This principle continues today as well.

In must be observed in regards to arrogant powers that they are not exclusive to particular people or a particular group. They cannot be considered to only be from one or two countries. Rather, they include individuals, organizations, and political parties who are open enemies of Islam. Because of their expansion they have been entitled the world arrogant powers.

Secondly, the enmity that the arrogant powers have with Islam started from the age of the Noble Prophet (s) and this groups enmity has severely increased with the internationalization and spread of Islam. They were always at war with the Prophet and his companions at all times; when the prophet had power and before he had power.

21 years ago Sayyid Arif Husseini’s face was covered in blood by the hands of the arrogant powers of the world.

Arif Husseini had a high status who reached the high status of martyrdom because of the way he worship the True One.

These were some of the words by Imam Khomeini about this great martyr.

Arif Husseini was born into a pure family and started his Islamic studies after middle school in Pakistan.

After he finished his preliminary Islamic studies he migrated to Najaf in order to complete them.

Arif Husseini entered Najaf around the same time that Imam Khomeini was exiled there.

He studied for some time under Ayatollah Madani and then was introduced through him to Imam Khomeini.

Arif Husseini was attracted to the Imam from that first meeting and decided to fight to the death for him.

Husseini’s struggles in Iraq caused him to be exiled from there. After he was exiled he returned to Pakistan and after a short while traveled to Qom. He benefited from the presence of Ayatollah Mutahhari, Ayatollah Wahid Khorasani, and others while living in Qom. He was also kicked out of Qom because of his movement and once again returned to Pakistan where he propagated Islam and Imam Khomeini’s thoughts. Three years before his martyrdom he was elected as the head of a large Shia organization which enabled him to spread revolutionary and religious thoughts quickly throughout Pakistan.

This is why he was targeted and killed by the arrogant powers of the world who feared the progress that he was making.